Video:

How Wal-mart created a big data pool

One prominent leader in data won't surprise you, it's Wal-mart. You know, they've been ahead in the analytics game for a long time, partially because they could afford to be, and buy the big iron. And you know, the vast investments in various areas of BI and analytics, but they're also a global corporation with a large number of divisions. And they got into using big data technology early on, specifically Hadoop. And the things they've really realised with this technology is the ability to pour all their data into a data lake, and provide that data back out to departments that actually need it, in a timely fashion. In their previous set up where they had siloed analytic bases, it might take three weeks for some, for a business unit owner to get the data that they want, because they have to send it off and retrieve it from a particular database. It would also cost a lot. Because if you couple the database analysis technology with the actual storage, it gets very expensive. The big data technologies have allowed them to decouple the storage from the analytical tools, and then only provide the data that's needed for analysis at any one point of time, and globally index the analytics data that they have.

How Wal-mart created a big data pool

One prominent leader in data won't surprise you, it's Wal-mart. You know, they've been ahead in the analytics game for a long time, partially because they could afford to be, and buy the big iron. And you know, the vast investments in various areas of BI and analytics, but they're also a global corporation with a large number of divisions. And they got into using big data technology early on, specifically Hadoop. And the things they've really realised with this technology is the ability to pour all their data into a data lake, and provide that data back out to departments that actually need it, in a timely fashion. In their previous set up where they had siloed analytic bases, it might take three weeks for some, for a business unit owner to get the data that they want, because they have to send it off and retrieve it from a particular database. It would also cost a lot. Because if you couple the database analysis technology with the actual storage, it gets very expensive. The big data technologies have allowed them to decouple the storage from the analytical tools, and then only provide the data that's needed for analysis at any one point of time, and globally index the analytics data that they have.

Big data is an agent of change

Big data isn't really just analytics alone, and I don't think taken alone, it's really the agent of change that's made Google and Facebook and the other companies that we celebrate for their use of data their success. There's no use in having an amazing insight about your customers if it's going to take you three months to react to it, because by then, it may have been a great insight, but it's a three month old insight. So it's not only the ability to sense your environment, it's the ability to be able to move fast as well. So an agile infrastructure that's based on things like cloud, open source, constant integration, the whole philosophy of managing software released as it's in testing, enables you as an organisation to move faster in those areas where you need to move fast. This isn't to say that you should throw out everything. Clearly as an organisation you have some stable activities and you have some development activities. One of the big opportunities with the big data technologies is that you can use data and development in the creation of new value, rather than having to use the systems that previously existed which were constrained and optimised to stable back office processes.

The scary thing about what’s happening in Silicon Valley

I think one of the most pressing and scary things about data and what business needs to understand is that, fundamentally, it's probably easier to teach business skills to 'quants'. Right, it's easier to teach business to data people, than it is to teach data to business people. And this is why we're seeing a Silicon Valley, we have this great data and computation machine being applied to successive industry verticals, as they understand the power of what they've got. So business needs to do its best to deepen the technology. Not in the sense of knowing the nuts and bolts, but knowing its characteristics of scaling, of cost base, of its capabilities, of the power of the platform.
I think, you know, when the chief source of what people perceive as disruption is really the effects of progressive digitisation. When something becomes digital, it immediately becomes tractable by software, which means, you know, orders of magnitude lower cost, orders of magnitude faster speed. And so many of these things we think of as disruption are artefacts of digitisation. So understanding what happens when a field of endeavour is digitised and taking those principles from one field and applying them to another is going to be a key skill.

Slimming down Big Data at Aimia

The digitalisation trend is very relevant. When you think more and more about loyalty, loyalty can sometimes be in any place at any time. So sometimes it's on the go and sometimes it's sitting on your couch at home. So being able to cater to people across the different channels, and sometimes although you might be very digital, you don’t want to be digital when you're at home, you want to have letters. So you could be a different persona, in different parts of the world, and our clients and our members often want things served to them in the way that they most want at that point in time.
Secondly, there's a trend for people to have all the data, so to do everything they can with the data. That's not necessarily what we want to do, we want to slim things down. So we talk a lot about small data versus big data. Is what you really want to do is get to something that's really personal and relevant for people, which actually means reducing the amount of communications but increasing the relevance to them. So I think there's a predisposition to increase the amount of communication and try to make it relevant but not really hitting the mark. So I think that's what our clients are most asking for and what we're most trying to look at.

Sensorware gathers valuable customer data for FedEx

Another great, good example, somewhat different really from the Walmart analytics example is FedEx and how they use big data. I think it's quite well known that routing all their packages is a huge, big data problem, but one of the aspects of their business that interests me is a product they have called SensorWare. Now, SensorWare is a sensor platform that you can ship in your package, if it's high value such as medical supplies that you really care about, and they'll monitor temperature, humidity, has the package been opened, GPS location, altitude and so on. So this is a big data product, and they've been able to provide this because of their existing investment in a platform that they can then bolt in to and use that. But the really interesting thing about this is that as they instrument their customers' deliveries, they don't restrict to just FedEx shipments, anybody on any air carrier, or on their own fleet, so they're also mapping out the usage patterns of their customers, learning what the customers want, what the customers value, and further identifying opportunities for growth.

Many companies want to be engaged content marketing, but they are really producing the same old “thought leadership” pieces where they tell stories about their own products. The 2017 Brilliant Minds Lord’s Showcase in London shows how to create truly strategic content marketing. Location: The Long Room, Lord’s Cricket, Ground Central London The 2017

As the convergence of TV and digital continues, Google now claims YouTube advertising effectiveness is greater than TV. Matt Brittin, Google’s top-ranking European executive, is set to unveil a report analysing ad campaigns across eight countries that show in 80% of cases YouTube ads were

The rise of Bernie Sanders, seemingly from nowhere came as no surprise to us at yBC.tv. In our video about Next Gen Consumerization, our friends at the Leading Edge Forum made a number of predictions about how technology is changing the world. And in relation